The Row Row Row Your Boat Emotion Game is a fun way to talk to kids about emotions and what they sound like. It can be a valuable tool in the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique for See It, Say It and Mimic It. Here’s how it works:

Use a set of emotion cards, an emotion chart or just your own imagination to throw out an emotion to another player.

The player must hum the song Row Row Row your boat sounding like the emotion given.

Laugh and have fun.

It’s that simple! You can use whatever song you want, but we selected Row Row Row Your Boat as a song that virtually everyone knows. A fun game to play if you have a deck of emotion cards (the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion cards are coming soon) would be to have the player select the emotion then have the other plays guess the emotion being hummed. You could also have the player pick the song they will be doing and have other player name both the emotion and the song. Break into teams and see how many each team can get in a given amount of time.

Credit to my 10-year-old Nathan who helped me come up with this game over dinner after soccer practice. Here’s a little video we made demonstrating the game. Please forgive the poor sound quality – it’s the best we could get with a phone and sitting at Arby’s!

Fishing for Feelings is a fun game to play with kids to help them learn about emotions. With our template and a few magnets, you can create a game that will help preschool through elementary aged kids to Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! Fishing for feelings is a great game to help kids start to master the skills included in the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique

Here’s how Fishing for Feelings works.

First download our easy to use template by clicking here or on the picture of the template to the right. Follow the instructions in the template for creating the emotion circles and playing the game.

We bought pre-made reinforced circles at Hobby Lobby and colorful magnets for minimal cost to make the game more aesthetically pleasing, but you can certainly cut your own reinforcing circles and use other magnets if you prefer. (NOTE: the link included for magnets are white as we found the color ones in our local store, but they are not available online)

Fidget Spinners are all the rage, and now Fidget Spinner Emotions will let you use a fidget spinner to help kids better understand and deal with their emotions. With kids ranging from 10 into their upper teens, I have seen first hand how they are all drawn to fidget spinners, and truth-be-told, I have a collection of them myself (though I tell people it’s only because of my work with kids).

How it works

Cut out the arrow pointer(s) you want to use.

Cut out the dotted circle and place the arrow pointer over the center of your fidget spinner. Use a piece of tape to attach it to the fidget spinner.

Place the fidget spinner over the gray fidget spinner outline in the middle of the emotions circle.

Spin the fidget spinner. When it stops, do one of the following based on the emotion the spinner lands on:

Emotions Jenga is a fun game you can play with kids to teach them about emotions. When children have a better emotional vocabulary, they are better equipped to deal with difficult emotions when life throws things at them.

Here’s how Emotions Jenga works:

Find a colored Jenga game. We found this one from Lewo on Amazon. If you can’t find a colored version, or just want to use the traditional version, you can use colored dots or write the names of the emotions directly on the blocks.

For each color make a stack of notes cards with a variety of emotion names on them. You can see the ones we used below. We found colored note cards at Hobby Lobby (on sale), but you could use white cards and just mark a color on them.

The child can pick any block to remove from the Jenga game. They then pick a card from the pile associated with that color. For whatever emotion they get, have them do one of the following. You can choose one activity, let the kids pick which one they one to do, or even use a die to determine which activity the child has to do:

Act out the emotion on the card.

Show what their face looks like when they feel that emotion.

Share a time they felt that emotion

Share a coping technique/something they like to do when they feel that emotion.

If you’ve lived with, or been around, any elementary aged children at any point in the last year or so, you are likely familiar with the concept of the bottle flip. The bottle flip is where you take a bottle about a 1/4 full with water and try to flip it and have it land right side up. My own nine-year-old is a self-taught expert and can land a water bottle right side up on an exit sign from across the room.

We’ve taken the concept of the bottle flip and developed a game that helps kids to recognize and talk about emotions. Here’s how Bottle Flip Emotions work:

First, print out the pdf template of the game. You can find it by clicking here. It’s designed to be printed on 11 X 17 paper (or similar size). You can print it on smaller paper if you need to, but it will work better on larger sized papers.

Feel free to come up with your own method of playing. We play that if you don’t land the flip you have act out the emotion the bottle is pointing to (alternatives include having the child share a time they felt that emotion or a coping skill they can use to deal with the emotion). If the child lands the bottle, they do not have to act out or talk about the emotion.

Mix up how you play

Make the children stand across the room, or

Don’t let the remainder of the group (assuming you’re working with a group of kids) see the results. Have the child act out the emotion and have the other kids guess it.

Have two children flip the bottles. The first one to land a bottle wins and the other child has to act out the emotion that the bottle lands on.

The Feelings Beach Ball is an easy, fun and effective way to help kids identify different emotions and talk about when they have experienced those emotions in their life. They’re simple to make too, you only need a simple Beach Ball (you can usually get one for around $1.00 after the summer is over) and a black permanent marker.

Here’s how it works:

Select an emotion for each color on the ball.

With a permanent marker, draw a face which represents each emotion.

With a group of kids, or between you and the child you are working with if one-on-one, pass the beach ball around.

When the child catches the ball, have them identify the emotion on the color under their right hand (or left if you’d prefer). The child can answer whatever emotion is elicited by the face you’ve drawn on the ball. It might not always match what you had envisioned, but if they’re way off base you might want to gently assist in identifying the emotion.

For an added twist, have the child share a time in their life they felt that emotion, or might feel that emotion.

You can also discuss ways of dealing with any negative emotions.

When the child is done, have him/her pass it to another child or back to you and play again.

Here are some pictures of our Feelings Beach Ball from different angles:

Sometimes it’s hard to get kids to open up about their feelings. Soccer Ball Questions if a great conversation starter and a way to get kids talking. Here’s what you’ll need:

A soccer ball. You can find cheaper ones at places like Five Below. I would suggest a white and black one and one that isn’t overly decorated as it will leave more space for your questions. A volley ball works fine too and allows you to include some longer questions but has fewer spots for different questions.

Permanent markers that will show up on your soccer ball. We used a regular black magic marker and a Sharpie white paint marker for the black spaces.

Write a question on each spot on the ball. The questions we used are listed below, but feel free to pick your favorites and add your own. Based on experience, I suggest writing questions on about a quarter of the ball at a time and letting the marker dry completely before doing the next section (this helps to avoid smudging and gives you a way to hold the ball while you’re working).

Once your ball is done, the exercise itself is pretty simple. Pass the ball around the room or the table. As a child catches the ball, have them answer the question in the section under their right thumb. You’ll be surprised how well this activity brings even shy kids out of their shell.

Here are the questions we put on this ball (you could do a separate ball with questions for an individual emotion like anger, sadness or grief). You will notice that we used a mixture of emotion-specific questions and questions designed to get kids talking about things that might spark conversations about emotions:

This is one of my favorite activities when teaching kids (or adults) about emotions. Emotional Animals Dice is a simple game that requires kids to think about different emotions then act them out for you or the rest of group. The fun part is that they act those emotions out as an animal. We originally found this idea on the Sweeter than Sweets blog. Here’s how it works:

Find or make two dice. You can find solid wood dice at places like Hobby Lobby. We used dry erase dice which allows us to change the animals and/or the emotions on the fly. So, for example, if there is a particular circumstance or emotion a child is dealing with you can add it to the dice to make sure it comes up while you’re playing. You can find the ones we used on Amazon.com.

Write the names of six animals on one of the dice. Options may include:

Sad

Happy

Angry

Afraid

Loving

Stressed

Confused

Nervous

Lonely

Disgusted

Write the names of six animals on the other dice. Options may include:

You might think that the anger and target practice probably shouldn’t go together. However, when it comes to kids taking some target practice can be an effective way of both venting anger and discussing a child’s anger with them so they can explain it better. Here is how this great idea, which we found originally on Little Birdie Secrets, works:

Draw a series of concentric circles on a large sheet of paper or white board to create a target. You can have the child make their own target if you have some time and let them decorate it however they want.

Have them write or draw things on the target that make them angry. As they do, talk to them about each item and how they’ve dealt with that anger in the past.

Have the child throw something at the target. Anything soft will do – you don’t want to break anything, but the physical activity of throwing something also helps to alleviate anger. Foam balls are a great option. I use the puffer balls shown below. I got a dozen of them on Amazon for around $10 and use them for a variety of activities.

Getting kids to talk about their emotions plays a huge part in helping them to process those emotions, get past them and move on with their lives. When you can combine that process with candy, well that just creates an all-around great situation. That why we were so excited to come across the M&M emotion game at Living a Rad Life.

In this game, you use snack sized bags of chocolate covered candy (M&M’s) in order to get kids talking about their emotions. You and the child (or every child if you are working with a group) starts with one fun-sized bag of candy. On your turn, you pull one candy out of the bag and share an emotion/experience based on that color. Only after sharing do you actually get to eat the candy.

In this version of the game, you have to do one of the following depending on which candy you pull out of the bag:

Red: Share something the makes you Happy

Brown: Share something that makes you Sad

Green: Share something that makes you Angry

Yellow: Share something that makes you Excited

Blue: Share one poor choice you’ve made today and what you could have done different